Geek Calligraphy Guide to Pen Types

by Ariela

I get a lot of questions from people who are interested in learning calligraphy. They cover a range of topics, but a lot of them concern materials. So today, I am going to talk about pens.

That's a lot of pens.

Like many things, there's no one right pen for all things. You need to use the correct tool for the job, and sometimes it comes down to a matter of personal preference.

I am going to go through the biggest categories of calligraphy pens and talk a little bit about what projects they are great for and what my favorite brands are.

Felt Tip Calligraphy Markers

A very small sample of the number of felt tip calligraphy markers out there

What they are good for:

Felt tips are great for beginners who are just starting out. They don't require any sort of learning curve for care and feeding of the pen, the inkflow, etc., which frees the user up to concentrate on learning pen angles and strokes.

As markers, they require no maintenance beyond remembering to cap them when you're done. They come in a rainbow of colors and you can buy them in any art store and many office supply stores as well.

They are also nice for casual projects and for taking along when you need to go somewhere, as they are the least likely to leak.

What they're not good for:

Felt tips are not great at creating thin lines. For projects that require hair-thin lines, felt-tips are not your friend. They are also not good at subtle changes in pen angle and pressure. The line quality and ink density are also not great. Work you do with them may be prone to fading.

Ariela's Favorite Brands:

Zig makes a nice variety of colors and they have double-tipped markers, which I like very much for the two-in-one. But they are pricier than a lot of the other brands.

Cartridge/Fountain Pens

Several uncapped fountain pens with cartridges and a bottle of ink.

What they are good for:

A good fountain pen with good ink will give you the most consistent ink flow of any tool available.

Cartridge pens provide better line quality than felt tips, with good thick and thin. They also travel pretty well.

The roundhand nibs of cartridge pens tend to be fairly rigid. This may be a feature or a bug depending on your preference.

If you need to write a whole lot with the same nib width, and you will use the pen regularly, a cartridge pen is probably the best tool for the job.

What they are not good for:

These are not pens to buy on a budget. Note my first sentence about "good" pens with "good" ink; that means pricey. Cheap pens and ink may give you okay results, but they may also be made of fail. Buying ink in cartridges is an even more expensive proposition than in bottles, and refillable cartridges are not everyone's cup of tea, though I rather enjoy the process.

Good fountain pens also need to be bought from a specialty store. You cannot walk into Michaels or your local craft store and buy one. Chances are that you will find Sheaffer's and Manuscript, and believe me, they are made of DO NOT WANT.

Cartridge pens need to be cleaned regularly. If you use your pens at least every other day, you can get away with only cleaning them every couple of cartridge changes/refills, but if you only use it occasionally you should clean it after every use. Cleaning them can be pain in the tush. Leave them uncleaned for long enough, and you will probably need to replace the whole pen as many companies don't sell replacement parts individually anymore (though you can always check Ebay!).

As mentioned above, the roundhand nibs on calligraphy pens with cartridges tend to be pretty rigid. If you like a flexible pen or need to get variations based on pen pressure, this is the wrong tool for the job.

For my money, I hate grinding the nibs on cartridge pens, but your mileage may vary.

I find that the variety of nib widths offered by cartridge pens is much narrower than for dip pen nibs.

If you want to use lots and lots of colors, then you need to have lots and lots of pens, or be prepared to wait a long time between switches as you clean and dry your pen.

Ariela's Favorite Brands:

I am a loyal devotee of Rotring Art Pens, though they have been cutting down their calligraphy line of late. 0.6 nibs are no longer to be had for love nor money, and 0.9s are only available on Ebay once in a blue moon. I like Rotring because they give good inkflow for a fairly inexpensive pen (by fountain pen standards), and they disassemble completely, which makes cleaning them - and especially drying out the parts afterward - much easier than the ones that don't break down so fully.

Unfortunately, my next favorite brand, Osmiroid, is no longer in production, though there are plenty of them floating around eBay. It's a workhorse brand with good value for your money. In the debit column, their nib and feed don't separate from the grip, which makes them harder to clean. However, the barrels of Osmiroid pens are shorter than the Rotring pens, which means they feel better in my hand.

Dip Pens

Just a few of the options available for dip pen nibs, pen bodies, and ink.

What they are good for:

If you want a variety of options, dip pens are the go-to. You can get nibs in so many sizes and shapes you may experience decision paralysis. Want roundhand nibs? Spoon nibs? Poster nibs? Copperplate nibs? Left-hand nibs? We have all those and more in a variety of sizes and flexibility.

Dip nibs are the most responsive to subtle changes in pressure and angle, and they have the widest thick and thin range. Some are more responsive than others and you can get a nib that is as responsive to pressure as you personally like.

Many, but not all, nibs are interchangeable, so you can also customize your pen experience a lot. You can pair any number of nibs with any number of pen bodies, and you can even alter an existing pen body or commission a new one if you really want something super special.

While the volume of nibs to buy can add up to a significant price tag, each nib is pretty cheap and there are very affordable pen bodies, making dip pens a very affordable option.

Ink is available in a rainbow of colors, which you can switch between easily with just a wipe of a cloth.

The pens need to be cleaned after each use, by which I mean dunked in water or a pen cleaner and then wiped off thoroughly. Don't put your nibs away wet. That's all.

What they're not good for:

There's a steep learning curve for dip pens. You don't suddenly switch from felt tips and ballpoints/biros to a dip pen without a serious adjustment period. In my opinion this is a skill well worth the time and effort, but beginners, you have been warned what you are getting yourselves into.

Ink can be blobby and distribute unevenly between a freshly dipped pen and one that needs to be dipped again. This gets easier and less apparent the more experienced the user, but it will never be quite as regular as a good cartridge pen.

If you have to write a large amount in a short amount of time, the time spent turning to dip the pen in the ink is wasted motion. If you are in a hurry, this is probably not the best pen for the job.

Ariela's Favorite Brands:

For broad nibs, I adore Mitchell roundhand nibs. But I am in the "bendier is better" camp. For those who like an inflexible nib, I hear that Brause is the go-to. Some of them also have built-in reservoirs, if that's your jam (it is most definitely not mine). If you are new to calligraphy, you may need to try both to figure out what you like.

I am brand agnostic when it comes to spoon nibs, G nibs, and EFs. I have some Hunts and some Speedballs that I quite like, but I have been itching to try out Leonardt brand as well as some of Brause's bendier nibs like the Blue Pumpkin.

Quills

Ariela's quills and equipment.

What they are good for:

Even moreso than metal nibs, quills are flexible, customizeable, and responsive to subtle shifts in pen angle and pressure. When used skillfully, a quill will yield a line quality like nothing else. Since each quill is cut and re-cut multiple times, you get to cut it in just the way you like, with the angles that you like, and the ink channels the way you like them.

If you are looking to do historically accurate reproduction or reenactment, quills are very probably what you will need (unless you are looking to mimic a time and place where reed pens were de rigeur).

What they aren't good for (aka, all the reasons we no longer use quills much):

Quills wear out quickly. If you  are writing a lot, you may need to re-sharpen your quill multiple times daily. They can be touchy about humidity levels, causing the tines to split annoyingly along the ink channel in dry temps.

Cutting quills is a whole separate skill set from writing with them, but unless you are part of a large operation where you have a dedicated quill cutter, you really cannot write with quills without learning to cut your own, which is also time-consuming and frustrating. Hint: if you had been part of one of those large operations, you would never have been allowed to progress to writing without first learning the grunt work of cutting quills.

As mentioned above, quills are very responsive instruments. This means that if you don't have a lot of experience and fine motor control, they can respond in ways you wish they wouldn't.

Quills can be annoyingly narrow to grip. It is simply not comfortable to firmly grasp something that small for a long period of time. After trying out several different fixes, I solved this issue by making grips out of Sugru, but goodness only knows what the scribes of yore did.

Ariela's Favorite "Brands:"

So far I have only worked with turkey feathers, but I hear goose feathers are better for tiny work, so I should get some of those for my mezuzah work (letters on mezuzot are teeny!).

Reed Pens

I don't actually use them at all, so I don't have any recommendations here.

Image from MerkazHasofrim.com

Plastic Nibs

What they are good for:

Yes, they are a thing that exists.

I have never heard of these being used by anyone except Torah scribes. It makes sense: they want something they don't have to shape themselves, but can't use metal because, aside from Kabbalistic squeamishness about using metal other than gold in the production of a Torah, safrut ink literally eats through metal nibs.

What they aren't good for:

I haven't actually ever tried one of them, but I cannot imagine that they are better than metal nibs for anything (except not being eaten by safrut ink).

Where To Buy Good Pens

If you want to buy pens in person, Dick Blick/Utrecht actually stocks a decent selection of nibs in-store. They also sometimes have Rotrings, so definitely check them out. 

If you have a local stationers, they may have good pens, or they may not. The older the store, the more likely they still stock good pens. Call or go in and look, but be prepared to come away empty-handed.

If you are shopping online, I cannot recommend John Neal Booksellers enough. If you are ready to take the plunge into buying parchment for something other than Jewish holy texts (which have a bunch of extra requirements), try Pergamena.

A Note on Inks

Ink behaves differently at different temperatures and humidities. It is also a matter of preference. I have a strong liking for Winsor & Newton brand ink, but I know other calligraphers who swear by Higgins, which I cannot abide. You may need to buy a bunch and try them out. And the ink you like best in the summer may not be the one you like in the winter.

 

A Note on Papers

A lot of your writing experience is determined by the paper on which you are writing. Even a great pen will not make writing on crummy paper much better. If you aren't having any luck with any pens, it might be time to try a different paper.

When not writing on parchment (real parchment, the kind made from animal skins, not the paper that gets called parchment by art stores), I like writing on Bristol, which is fairly inexpensive and doesn't bleed much.

 

Any Other Questions?

You can always ask me on Facebook or Twitter. As long as I have time, I am happy to chat about the tools of the trade.

Terri Goes to Madison, a WisCon Report

by Terri

The larger matted prints hanging on their panel. 

2016: It was Memorial Day weekend and my phone wouldn't shut up. The weather in Boston was horrible, as was the weather in Upstate New York.* And my best friend in the world appeared to be having the time of her life.

My phone wouldn't shut up because WisCon 40 was when Ariela discovered Twitter. She was tweeting panels and squeeing about the people she was meeting. When she got home, it was all she could talk about for a couple of weeks. I decided that if we could make it work, next year I wanted in on this thing that my best friend loved so much. After all, I'm a feminist. I'm a fan. WisCon seemed a logical fit.

So this year, I boarded a series of planes in order to arrive in Madison, WI on Thursday May 25. I got to the hotel, checked in, unpacked, got a drink,** got my badge, scanned the program book and waited for Ariela to show up. 

When Ariela arrived, we may have broken the eardrums of anyone in the parking lot. It was so wonderful to be at a con with my best friend again. That colored my entire weekend, even the parts where I didn't have as much fun as I was hoping to. "This person might not be very nice, but ARIELA IS HERE! WE ARE TOGETHER!" was a thought that occurred more than once. That being said, Thursday evening was when I began to meet some truly awesome people whom I am glad to know now.

The greeting card and small matted print display.

On Friday, we set up the art. For this con, since we inadvertently ended up with a significant amount of table*** space, Ariela made a set of nifty cardboard display stands (as seen in the image below on the left). There was so much art to be nervous at (including a debut coloring page - my idea!), but I was good and tried to only fidget with it a few times over the weekend.

As is often the case with conventions that I am excited to attend, there were more things in the various programming slots that I wanted to go to than the laws of physics would permit. There was an amazing Leverage panel, moderated by the fabulous Michi Trota. Leverage is one of my favorite TV shows, and listening to people gleefully enjoy it with the entire room was wonderful. I also attended a great panel about Unpopular Opinions and how to not yuck your friends yum, while also acknowledging that you might not like things that they like. It was wonderfully affirming to be in a room with people who all had things that they didn't like that it was assumed everyone else did.

Ariela on the left with her fabulous blue dress, satin gloves, feathered fascinator and Impressive Makeup. I am on the right with my fabulous dress from Pendragon costumes, purple hair, glittery headscarf and Impressive Necklace. The temporary tattoo on my left shoulder is in the style of a band-aid that reads "I Am Enough."

There was much socializing, a trip to the hot tub, more drinks, my homemade braised minute steaks, and tasty breakfasts with great conversations. Of course, it would not be WisCon without the Dessert Salon and Guest of Honor Speeches. 

This year's Guests of Honor were Amal El-Mohtar and Kelly Sue Deconnick. Both spoke about their relationships to story and storytelling. I'm still processing their speeches, but here are my favorite pull quotes from each speech:

"Every time I try to pin down a truth about myself, about my identity, it's like trying to pin down mercury." ~ Kelly Sue Deconnick

"Why do we talk about losing an argument instead of learning a truth?" - Amal El-Mohtar

I could simply list quotes from the speeches, but that's not what you're here for. Suffice it to say that they were full of hard yet inspiring truths, and they had me on the edge of tears. I think that the best response to those speeches is the tweet Ariela sent out at the end of the con:

"We are getting progressively more angry and intersectional feminist in our art. Because eff 2017. #WC41 #WisCon41." No one is perfect, but we are taking the energy and trying to do our best. 

During what WisCon calls The Great Sign-Out,**** I got the all important photos of the Guests of Honor holding my knitting:

Kelly Sue Deconnick holding the cowl I was working on throughout the weekend. 

Amal El-Mohtar holding the cowl I was working on throughout the weekend.

I also got an opportunity to meet and geek out about comics with Jess Plummer (who writes for Book Riot Comics, among other things). Mostly we talked about how Nick Spencer is driving Marvel Comics down the drain and into the sewer,***** but I also heard her talk about G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel books and how awesome they are. It's so refreshing to meet a woman comics commentator who is supporting female comic creators and who won't stand for any nonsense in her comics.

Was it a perfect con? Nope. There's no such thing. I met some wonderful women (and a few men), had some conversations I'm still pondering, heard speeches that inspired me to keep working and fighting, and even attended some panels. Will I be coming back next year? You bet. 

*Memorial Day weekend is typically a small scale SCA war, and we were hoping to day trip Sunday. With rain both here and there, no such luck.

**We stayed on the fancy floors of the Madison Concourse, which entitled us to free cocktails, free breakfast, and other free nibbles during our stay. I am never one to turn my nose up at free alcohol.

***As opposed to pegboard panel

****Instead of having various signings throughout the con, they hold one MASSIVE one on Monday, after all the panels are over. This way no one has to miss a panel to get something signed.

*****We remain a #SayNotoHYDRACap establishment around here.

Ded of Con

by Terri

Chibi Ariela and chibi Terri are both very tired. They have the swirly eyes to prove it.

The accompanying image really says it all. It's been a wonderful weekend, but we're both quite conned out. Next week, I will regale you with tales of my very first WisCon!

New Product: Social Justice Warrior's Oath

Do random haters on twitter call you an SJW pejoratively? Embrace your defending side with this oath.

How It Came To Be:

While a a warrior isn't a profession you typically find on a resume these days, social justice issues are very pertinent to the geek world. So much so that "SJW" is thrown by one side at the other as an insult, and simultaneously embraced by those who feel that they are fighting the good fight. Many people choose other "classes" besides Warrior, so this print is also available for Bard, Cleric, Mage, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue. None of the classes use gendered terms - that's on purpose. 

As with our other professional oaths, items in the illumination around the edges are the accouterments of the trade. Social justice is a really abstract thing to illustrate, so Ariela went for the RPG classes' tools instead. Drawing from cultures around the world, it is an array of items, many of which could be used by several of the various classes. It was very important to us to move away from the Eurocentrism found in most fantasy role playing settings, which is why many of the items might be unfamiliar to you.

Unlike our other oaths, this one is not humorous.  We think that humor definitely has its place in the social justice movement, but this is not its place.

The Social Justice $_CLASS Oath is 11" x 14" (matted dimensions) and costs $45.

If we did not include your preferred RPG class in our list, please contact us. We can make an oath happen.

We're Off to WisCon

by Terri

Chibi Terri & chibi Ariela are ensuring that All The Art is properly labeled.

Once again, we get to go to a con TOGETHER!* 

Ariela and I will both be attending WisCon 41 this weekend at the Madison Concourse hotel in Madison, WI. Con starts on Friday and ends Monday.

Our art is also attending! The WisCon Art show will be open from Friday afternoon through Monday. Our selection will be a small subset of what is available on our website, but there will be lots of everything we bring, including a new product and a con exclusive. Also, the art show there is instant sale only, no bidding, so whatever you buy can leave with you immediately.

The art show formally opens at 6 on Friday with a meet and greet until 7:30. We will both be there, so please stop by and say hello!

I will be attending panels, being Nervous At The Art, and generally having a good time and meeting people. If you're there, you can probably spot me due to my Art Show Shawl in our business colors.

Ariela will be on the following panels:

Saturday

Wait...This Is About Sex?
8:30am-9:45am
Capitol A
Fairy tales are full of sexual symbols, stories, and injunctions. Come listen as our panelists unpack some of your favorite stories.

Sunday

Where the Fuck Are the Femmes in Space(s)? The Radical Nature of Femme
10:00am-11:15am
Conference 1
There have been a number of panels in the past centered around the place of "femme" within the feminist context, particularly within feminist spaces. But for those who identify as femme, such constant need to justify our identity serves as both threat and erasure from a sphere where femmes are constantly engaged in emotional labor. This panel seeks to move beyond the question of "can femme be feminist?" and instead explore the ways in which femme is a radical identity, including some of its history and evolution as a term originating in queer community that is being co-opted by the mainstream straight lexicon.

F*ck You, Pay Me: Equally Compensating Marginalized Creators
1:00pm-2:15pm
Caucus
"Do It for the exposure! Aren't you just grateful to have this opportunity?" Too often, marginalized creators are thrown these aphorisms as compensation for their hard work and creativity instead of receiving financial compensation for their endeavors like their privileged counterparts. In this panel, we'll discuss the importance and obligation of equal compensation for equal work. We'll also discuss the benefit of outreach, and how that's led to opening geek culture markets to creators and consumers who don't look or think like the "good ol' boys."

You can also catch us at the Dessert Salon, as well as perusing all of the usual things a good con has to offer. Hope we see you there! If not, be warned - our twitter feeds will probably be a lot more active than usual.

Art at ConQuesT

Our art is also going to Kansas! It travels more easily than we do. If you are at ConQuesT in Kansas City, KS, you will be able to see and buy our art in the art show there as well.

*When your best friend and business partner lives halfway across the country from you, shared time is precious. Shared fandom time doubly so.

Employing A Sensitivity Checker

by Ariela

Old Economy Steve longs for the days when he could avoid people telling him how offensive his views are.

Sensitivity readers have been quite the hot topic in some parts of teh interwebs lately.

What is a sensitivity checker? When a creative type, in my case an artist, wants to use cultural elements from a culture not their own, you employ someone from that culture to act as an expert guide, telling you things that are important to know, and giving feedback that should help you to portray the culture in question accurately and in a way that is not offensive. This can cover anything from preventing embarrassing errors like those from our Jewish Stock Photography Fail Blog, to the horribly offensive error of making Nazis the good guys in a Holocaust novel supposedly told from the point of view of a Jewish girl (we won't link to that book, but here is a scathing review by Katherine Locke). 

In some ways, it is no different than consulting any other expert so you don't make ignorant mistakes, but here the stakes aren't just your own embarrassment but the possibility of perpetuating oppression of real people. 

I recently had my first serious sensitivity check. Our product release next week will include a picture of a keris, which is a Malaysian dagger with serious cultural significance. That's the sort of thing you don't want to just assume you can just chuck into a piece of art when you don't know anything about the culture surrounding it. Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, we were connected to Jia-Ling Pan, who was incredibly helpful. We highly recommend her, if you need a sensitivity check for anything from Malaysia. (Let us know if you would like to be put in touch; she said she would prefer a referral than a link.)

Here are a few basic takeaways from the process.

1. Pay them.

This should go without saying, but alas, it needs to be said. Giving someone a crash course in the intricacies of one's culture isn't a privilege, it is work. Listening to and answering questions, many of which may be ignorant and even offensive is hard work. Giving constructive feedback is work.

This is true for art and even more true for reading a manuscript, which takes a heck of a lot longer.

Pay them. If one cannot afford to pay someone from the culture one is writing/singing/art-ing/movie-making about to do a sensitivity check, then one doesn't get to play in that sandbox.

This doesn't mean you don't get to create, just that this particular avenue is not available. Lack of money sucks. It sucks for you as a creator, but it also sucks for people whose culture gets trampled over insensitively and are then asked to help someone else make sure they're doing it right for free. Sensitivity checkers need to be paid.

2. Listen to what they have to say, and give them space to talk.

You employ a sensitivity checker because they know things you don't. Sometimes that means answers to your questions, but other times that means telling you the answers to questions you didn't even know should be asked. Give your sensitivity checker some unstructured space to talk rather than framing everything within a Q&A. Your questions are shaped by your own assumptions after all, and they may not translate into the culture you are trying to learn about. You might even wind up getting more material out of it in ways you didn't anticipate.

3. Accept what they have to say.

Sometimes a sensitivity checker will say things you don't want to hear. You have to be willing to go into the check alert to the possibility that you might have to rework part of your project, a lot of your project, or even scrap your project entirely. The earlier you ask, the less likely this will be, so check early and often! Though even that is not a guarantee.

It's never easy to hear negative feedback, particularly when it means losing a lot of work. If you are only interested in affirmation and will come up with reasons why you don't need to take the negative feedback too, don't bother to have a check done at all. 

Mary Robinette Kowal has an excellent blog post about this. Please check it out.

4. No Group is Homogenous.

As in any group, different people will react to the same thing in different ways. Just because your sensitivity checker reads things one way doesn't mean that other people won't have a different take. Having more than one sensitivity checker is a good idea, particularly if the source material is emotionally significant or you are using a lot of it. And even if all your readers say it's fine, there's no guarantee that someone else will not be offended. Which brings us to:

5. Your creation is your responsibility.

If someone else is offended by the thing you made, even if you had a sensitivity checker, the responsibility is yours. It is not the job of a sensitivity checker to tell you how to do something so that you cannot be criticized for it; they're just there to give your their own read, and possibly make a best guess at how others may feel. The mere fact that you hired a sensitivity checker is not a shield against criticism, and if the work offends someone, then it is not the sensitivity checker's fault. It is on you to own up to any damage caused and decide how to proceed, apologize, make amends, fix it, etc.

Coda: Sensitivity checking is not a substitute for #OwnVoices

#OwnVoices is a campaign to lift up the work of people in various marginalized identities telling their own stories. It is not enough to have white people telling stories centering People of Color, or straight people telling stories about LGB people, or cisgendered people telling stories about trans people. No matter how skilled or well-intentioned the creator, they will not get it all. People have a right to portray themselves. And we should support them when they do by patronizing their work.

That said, I am very much not in the camp that says it is never okay for someone to portray a person outside their own identity. That leads to other kinds of erasure and normalizes the idea of homogenous societies. But when we do paint pictures of other people, with words or brushes or songs or cinema, we need to make sure we do it with care and respect. That's where sensitivity checkers are so important.

Find a Sensitivity Checker for Your Own Work

There are lots of people out there who do this work. Writing in the Margins is a great directory if you are looking for someone to keep you from accidentally putting your foot in it.

We Used Up All Our Sick Days...

A large blue plush version of the rhinovirus, accompanied by a blue tinted microscopic image of same. Image courtesy of ThinkGeek, where you can buy this cutie.

by Terri

...so we're calling in dead. Both Ariela and I are getting over various forms of rhinovirus, and Monster* decided to celebrate Daddy coming back from California by running a nasty fever. So neither of us has the brainpower to be clever at our wonderful public. We'll be back next week to talk about the importance of employing** sensitivity readers.

*My 3.5 year old daughter, whom I do not publicly name on the internet

**Employing being the operative word

Jewish Stock Photography Fails

by Terri & Ariela

The world of stock photography is an inherently odd place to visit. Where else can you get photos of kitchen demolition side by side with any flower you could possibly think of? 

Themed stock photos can get... interesting. Just typing "$_HOLIDAY Stock Photos" into a Google Image search can set off nightmares or fits of giggles. Really, there are things that should never be Earth Day themed. But when you start searching for stock photography of non Christian religious holidays, the photos don't just look strange, they look like an alien's attempt to pass as a Hyoo-man. For example, there seems to be a compulsive need to put either matzah, a tallit,* or a Ḥanukkah menorah in almost all of them to scream JEWISH very loudly. Even if the image is tagged for a holiday containing none of these ritual objects or foods. Like Tu B'Shvat.**

Ariela's day job involves email marketing for the Union for Reform Judaism. This means finding images to go in said emails and results in her spending a lot of time combing through stock image catalogs, particularly around Jewish holidays. This, in turn, led to her IMing Terri in fits of disbelief so that someone else could share in the WTF-ery.

But why should we limit the horror to just the two of us? So we present: Bad Jewish Stock Photography. And when we say bad, we mean REALLY BAD.

We have not included images in this post that are just mis-tagged, like when you search for Passover and get Easter results. That's wrong and sometimes offensive, but not what we're listing here. All photos are watermarked with the image source, unless we can no longer find them at the source. We acknowledge that this post is very image heavy. The captions contain the best descriptions we can write, the commentary on the images is in the body text of the blog post below them.

And yes, we know about this article in The Forward. But that photo isn't even the tip of the Jewish stock photography fail iceberg. It's a small chip off the glacier.

Image shows an open Hebrew prayerbook on a stand, a blue velvet kippah with silver embroidery, a ḥanukkiyah with all its candles lit, and a folded tallit with black and silver stripes.

This one originally came from iStock, but can no longer be found there. The lit ḥanukkiyah with the tallit is bad enough - a tallit is worn during the day and the ḥanukkiyah is lit only at night - but if you look closely at the text of the open book, it is open to the evening service for Yom Kippur, i.e. not a text you would ever need at Ḥanukkah. Anyone who knows any Hebrew could have told them not to do this.
This was the photo that originally inspired Ariela to do an ongoing series on bad Jewish stock photography.

Image shows a wood framed slate with "HAPPY PASSOVER" written on it in stylized chalk lettering. Surrounding the frame clockwise from noon are: pieces of square machine made maztah, un-shelled walnuts, a red-brown haggadah, red tulips with yellow stripes, a wine glass on its side with a splash of wine still left, a bottle of pink wine on its side, a stack of three round hand made matzahs on a white cloth, more un-shelled walnuts, a leaf of lettuce with an egg on it, and more tulips.

It's Passover, not Easter. Why the tulips? Also, why is a mostly drunk wineglass lying on its side? How is that happy?

Image shows an older balding man wearing a tallit and holding an open siddur standing next to a table. To his left is a seated woman with short hair, to her right is a young boy in a sweater vest, button down shirt and Hanukkah themed suede kippah. To the right of the older man is a seated man in a long sleeved polo shirt with a red satin kippah. There is someone seated next to this man, but the image cuts off everything but some arm in a blue sleeve. On the table is a silver plate with square machine made matzah and an unlit ḥanukkiyah with all of the arms holding blue and white striped candles.

The image description for this photo on Thinkstock is "Parents and their son and a rabbi at a Hanukkah ceremony." Just what is a Hanukkah ceremony, pray tell? There is very little to say about this image that the provided description doesn't cover. The words, they escape us.

Image shows a tallit with blue and gold stripes over white painted wooden slats. Positioned over the tallit are (clockwise from top): glass bowl with honey and wooden dipper, two broken sheets of square machine made matzah, a ḥanukkiyah lying flat on its side, a shofar, and a silver kiddush cup partially filled with wine and sitting on a silver coaster.

The only thing this picture illustrates effectively is "We have no meaningful understanding of Jewish holidays."

Image shows a lit red pillar candle sitting on the pages of an open Hebrew prayerbook.

No. Just no. You might wish to pray by candlelight, but if we ever catch you with a lit candle on your siddur, we will hurt you.

Image shows a tallit with blue and gold stripes on a rough wooden surface. Arranged on and beside the tallit from left to right are: a teal suede kippah with a silver border, 4 mostly empty silver kiddush cups in a diagonal line, and a shofar.

Once again, juxtaposition fail. One does wear a kippah to the Passover seder, but not a tallit. And a shofar isn't a Passover ritual object at all.

Image shows a blue and gold striped tallit (with atarah showing this time, for variety) on wooden slats. Over the tallit are (from left to right): a shofar, a black suede kippah with a gold border embossed with Jewish stars, and matzah. Once again, juxtaposition fail.

This is a whole genre. See more here. 

The Crown Jewel of the Collection

This has been scrubbed from all the stock sites we could find. We don't blame them. What the heck were they thinking?

Yes, that is a model of the Ark of the Covenant positioned next to a piggy bank sporting clovers and "good luck" painted on its side. The two are positioned so that the carrying rod of the ark appears to be jammed up the piggy's butt.

There was another in this same series that showed the same model of the Ark perched on the top of someone's foot with what appeared to be an industrial site in the background. We don't understand.

We have never run across any other Jewish Stock Photography fail so egregious, and we hope we never will.

*Prayer shawl worn by Jewish adults during daytime services. It is only ever worn at night once a year, on the eve of Yom Kippur.

**The 15th day of the month of Shvat (lunar month, generally falls around February). Often referred to as "Jewish Arbor Day," the Talmud lists this date as "the new year for trees." In the Mediterranean, this is often the beginning of springtime. It is celebrated by eating dried fruit and planting trees.

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New Greeting Card: Covertly Hostile Mother's Day Card

As Mother's Day approaches we introduce a card for those whose relationship with their mother is painful and sometimes even hostile. Use the language of flowers to quietly say how you really feel while outwardly obeying your obligation to express affection.

While Mother's Day is touted as a time to celebrate your mother as the "best mom ever," for many people it serves instead as a painful reminder that their mother is neither good to them nor good for them. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to disengage from toxic moms, and going through socially mandated demonstrations of love is extremely painful when they are so at odds with your emotional reality. We wanted to create a card that would be a little less painful to give, because it would, secretly, convey your true feelings.

This card is a sharp departure from our usual, cutesy chibi card style. Instead it is designed to blend in with the drugstore pack and look entirely unexceptional. Terri described it as filling a niche Hallmark refuses to create, despite the fact that it is their advertising that changed card-giving from a nice gesture on the holiday to a social norm.

The card features two flowers. Lavender means distrust, and tansy means resistance or a declaration against the recipient. But your mother doesn't need to know that. Also, due to the proliferation of flower dictionaries, it is possible to come up with many alternate readings that are completely innocuous, giving you plausible deniability.

Card is $4 and comes with a pink envelope.

Unfortunately, gender stereotypes have thus far defeated our efforts to come up with a Father's Day equivalent, as giving a card featuring flowers to your horrible dad would definitely not count as "flying under the radar." If you have any suggestions for what we might do to offer a Father's Day equivalent, please contact us.

How Movies (and TV) Fail at Writing with Quill Pens

by Ariela

I don't know of any profession that feels it is well and accurately represented by pop cultural portrayals. Lawyers complain about courtroom dramas, police complain about crime procedurals, etc. So it probably won't surprise you that media portrayals of people writing with quills are, well, less than realistic.

Exhibit A:

Hermione Granger, portrayed by Emma Watson, using a quill all wrong.

I love me some Harry Potter, but the quills in the movies make me growl inarticulately. I mean, leaving aside the fact that all quills in the HP universe must be enchanted, because there is no other way that a child who grew up using pencils and biros (ballpoints, for those of us reading the US editions), could possibly just pick up a quill and write with it. No chance. 

Feather anatomy, courtesy of Ask a Biologist, Arizona State University

*ahem* As I was saying, the movie's portrayal of writing with quills is actually pretty standard for onscreen depictions. And it's wrong. Those super wispy bits down by Hermione's hand are called the downy barbs, and I don't know of any scribe who doesn't trim those away. Apart from making the quill harder to grasp, they will pick up ink every time you dip your nib. Yuck. Most of us trim further up the shaft as well, right into the vane (see handy guide to parts of a feather). Some trim all the barbs away and leave the pen as just the central shaft.

Also, most of us clip the opposite end of the quill. Writing with a pen that has an overlong barrel will unbalance the pen, whether it's a felt-tip or a quill. And, depending on how you sit while you write, you might wind up poking yourself with the opposite end in the eye or up your nose. Yeah, not fun.

An illustration of the issues mentioned above. Using a quill that hasn't been properly trimmed is terrible.

Yet pop culture persists in this myth, and I persist in being cranky about it on Twitter.

So piqued by it was I that, while wandering the National Gallery in London last month, I started snapping pictures of paintings of people writing with quills. Since these paintings date to times and places when people actually used quills, they're all correct depictions. I had thought that it would make a good tumblr - Paintings of People Depicted Using Quills Correctly - but I was prevented from starting it by my utter bewilderment at the tumblr interface. (Anytime anything gets posted to tumblr for Geek Calligraphy, Terri is the one doing it. G-d bless managers.) But Mary Robinette Kowal suggested that I could make a Pinterest board instead.

So, behold:

There's not a whole heck of a lot there yet, but it will grow.

Also, as a bonus, please enjoy pictures of these souvenir "quills" which I found in the Tower of London gift shop. Appropriate placement, really, as these are not writing devices but torture devices. [cowers]

The image does not properly convey the terrible quality of the metal pen nib slapped on the end of this "plume."

Yes, that's a ballpoint shoved in the end of this quill. Because the untrimmed shaft wasn't enough.